What is God's View of Culture? Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of the series "What is God's View of Culture?".  To prepare for this post, I read a couple of chapters in Paul G. Hiebert's Anthropological Insights for Missionaries, and re-read portions of Gerald R. McDermott's Can Evangelicals Learn From World Religions: Jesus, Revelation and Religious Traditions.  Both are fascinating books, especially McDermott's (he is also the author of God's Rivals: Why Has God Allowed Different Religions?- which is also a great book I've read- and Jonathan Edwards Confronts the Gods: Christian Theology, Enlightenment Religion, and Non-Christian Faiths).  Other helpful resources are One Church, Many Tribes and Culture, Christ, & Kingdom Study Guide, both by Richard Twiss.

What is God's view of culture?

Today I'd like to begin a series of posts on the biblical view of culture and indigenous arts. I've referenced this topic partially in my series on biblical examples of contextualization, which focused on examples of God using contextualization in the Bible. In this series, I want to focus on how we as Christ's ambassadors should regard cultural expressions in the form of visual arts-- i.e., whether as basically good, sinful, or neutral.

Storyboard Carvings of Palau

I decided to do some research into Oceanic art, and came across a contemporary art form called storyboards, from the island nation of Palau. Palau is located in the Pacific Ocean, 500 miles east of the Philippines. The population is approximately 21,000, and 70% is made up of native Palauans.  In recent centuries, Palau was ruled by Spain, Germany, Japan, and the U.S. since World War II, but more became an independent republic in 1981.  Missionaries have been active in Palau since the early nineteenth century, when Jesuit missionaries reached the islands.  The listing of religious affiliation from Wikipedia is a bit confusing.  According to one report, 49.4% of the population are Roman Catholics, while in another report, the figure given is 65%.  The remaining population is made up of 21.3% Protestants (2000 individuals?), 8.7% Modekngei and 5.3% Seventh-day Adventists.  Modekngei is a hybrid religion that combines ancient Palauan beliefs with Christianity, and is mostly confined to one village.  This religion could be the topic of an entirely separate post.

Stars in Symmetry

Belated Merry Christmas, and Happy 2011!  I've been on a bit of a hiatus lately, and am trying to begin work on a new post.  In the meantime, check out this AWESOME blog about Islamic art: Stars in Symmetry.  This guy describes himself as "obsessed [with] the repeating tessellations of the tiles that adorn Islamic, religious or secular, buildings... The blog is a tribute to it."  He posts lots of great resources on Islamic art, architecture, and, of course, zillij.  Enjoy!

The Indian Christian Artists Forum

Please Note: All posts on this blog are intended for informational purposes only, not as an evaluation or endorsement of any artist, art form, organization or website.  If you have concerns about the accuracy of any information presented please contact the author at hmsarthistorian@gmail.com.

I recently came across a news story about a group of Catholic Christians in India who are getting serious about deepening the connection between their faith and the visual arts. The story describes the formation of the Indian Christian Artists Forum, which seeks to "promote study and appreciation of Christian art among various sections of the people- clergy, religious and laity in the church, and the wider society in India, and to encourage a deeper understanding, appreciation and application of Indian Christian art in theology, liturgy and architecture in the Church in India." The forum was convened by artist/priest Dr. Paul Kattukaran, and consists of fifteen renowned artists from various parts of India. At their inaugural meeting in August, the group appointed Kattukaran as the national coordinator for the forum.

Contextualized Henna Art

Creation to Return story from Henna Stories on Vimeo.

In today's post I'm happy to present the contextualized artwork of a missionary recently in the field. Mina Rowland (name changed for security purposes) has been a Southern Baptist missionary in East Africa and South Asia. In her work, she chose to explore the use of henna storying for evangelism.  Henna (also known as mehndi in Hindi) is a plant that grows in regions of Africa, southern Asia, Australia and Oceania. Among other things, it's used as a form of body decoration in the form of temporary tattoos, most often by new brides. Henna has been used to decorate women's bodies since the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean area (3000-600 B.C.), and today is used widely by Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians.  Henna is even mentioned in the Bible in Song of Solomon 1:14 and 4:13,14.

Before reading the interview below with Mina, please check out this story about her use of henna storying.  At the end of my interview with her below, look for additional links and downloadable resources, as well as a related link about a henna art show. 

The Need for Contextualized Theology and Evangelism

Here's a great blog post by Allen Yeh on the need for nonwestern theology in the body of Christ, by way of Matt Stone at Glocal Christianity.  I encourage you to read it because it explains why we in the West need to hear the perspectives of our nonwestern brothers and sisters in Christ.  I think it is a great parallel to 1 Corinthians 12:12-26, where Paul explains how indispensable each part of Christ's body (the church) is to the others.